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What I’ve learned in UX in the first half of 2016

Since the beginning of the year we as a team of developers started meeting 1-2 times a month talking about UX design. Urged with a motivation to create better software for our clients and serve them better I started the conversation inside our company. Years ago I read classics like Alan Cooper’s The Inmates and Don Norman’s The Psychology of Everyday Things. They left me with a craving to create something more fitting for users but I had no place where to start. At the turn of the year I focused on learning as much as I can about UX, product design and design in general. Here’s my list of insights I gained in these 6 months (in no particular order):

doing UX means changing the culture and mindset of the whole company from technology to people

contextual observation and interviews are key and the most profitable and motivating method to find out more about your users

analytics and data can tell you more about what user do, interviews why are they doing it

in the enterprise context where we are it is sometimes difficult if not impossible to gain access to users

some methods from UX feel a bit squishy and the value of doing them not apparent

traditional (UX) designers have a hard time talking about the value of UX for the business

the definition of UX is all including at best and inconsistent at worst, but it doesn’t really matter to me as I want to improve the software we write regardless of what it is called or which responsibility it is

in order to craft a better user experience our development process has to change drastically

the creative method (observe, reflect, make) is a way to order my concepts about UX

users behave differently in different situations, the better way to capture that is jobs to be done not persona

the UI layer is where experiments are made, therefore it should be changed more easily than other parts

assumptions are very dangerous, trying to validate or falsify them

you have to live with assumptions, know their risk

conversations are the way to spread knowledge, not documentation and not presentations

let users or stakeholders talk, do not complete thoughts for them, get comfortable with silence

the user has a whole different view of your UI than you

I have to learn to suspend judgement

ask why but not endlessly

the struggling moments of your users are the best points to start for a better solution

understand the problem, the context and the user’s motivations better

requirements are liars

use whiteboards more, they help me to think spatially

if you cannot argue for a design, the client overruns you with his taste

think in systems, systems of people and design systems

small usability improvements are easy and therefore we often tend to flock to them

conversations with people are hard therefore we tend to avoid asking the hard and important questions